


take me out (and take me home)

by chelicerata



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Endgame? I don't know her, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, but like... kind of introspective sap, unapologetic sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25742656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelicerata/pseuds/chelicerata
Summary: "Bored of the party already, Dr. Parker?""I should be asking you that,” Peter says, using his glass to cover the absurd smile he gets whenever Tony calls himDoctor. “Hiding from your own birthday party?""Turns out I'm officially too old for anything where someone's passed out on the bathroom floor before midnight," Tony says.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 31
Kudos: 146





	take me out (and take me home)

**Author's Note:**

> Have some nice, plotless established relationship I wrote while failing to finish any of my WIPs. Title from Tswift’s ‘Lover’, because that’s just the kind of day it is.

The still quiet of the rooftop deck is shattered when someone opens the door from the penthouse, letting the raucous sounds of the party spill out into the night. Tony doesn't move from where he’s stretched out luxuriously on a reclining deck chair, staring up into the stars. At sixty years old he’s officially a rude old person, and no one’s allowed to say anything about it.

"Happy birthday, old man." Peter comes up behind him and leans down to give him a kiss on the cheek. What a sap, Tony thinks, desperately fond. He looks up at Peter, framed by the light coming from inside, dressed to perfection in a slim cut grey suit – he still, indulgently, lets Tony pick them out - and thinks he's never seen anything more beautiful.

He snags one of the two glasses of champagne Peter's holding.

"Why, hello there," Tony says, exaggerated, waggling his eyebrows. "What's a sweet young thing like you doing talking to a decrepit old man like me?"

Peter laughs and plops down next to Tony on the chair. There really isn't enough room for two full grown men, so it's more like he's sitting in Tony's lap. Tony's not complaining.

"Well, Mr. Stark, it's just that I'm such a big fan," Peter says, fluttering his lashes absurdly, taking a sip of his own champagne. "And you pull off the silver fox look so well."

Tony _had_ been trying to pull off the salt and pepper look - but he supposes he's more salt than pepper at this point, so he’ll take what he can get. 

"I guess I should be lucky I'm married to a budding gerontophile," he says, curling one arm around Peter to bring him closer and pressing his face against the carefully styled curls. "Bored of the party already, Dr. Parker?"

"I should be asking you that,” Peter says, using his glass to cover the absurd smile he gets whenever Tony calls him _Doctor_. “Hiding from your own birthday party?"

"Turns out I'm officially too old for anything where someone's passed out on the bathroom floor before midnight," Tony says. 

Peter pulls a face, like he thinks Tony can’t see. He's in stubborn denial that Tony's ever going to be too old for anything, in that way that only a twenty-something who’s started aggressively ignoring their own rapidly impending thirtieth birthday can be. Tony, on the other hand, has maybe started getting a little – preoccupied. Sometimes. With the whole aging thing. 

For example: Peter's really not going to take it well when he figures out Tony's quickly becoming too old for the Iron Man suit, too. Not that he suits up much now, anyway – they’ve got a veritable bumper crop of heroes lurking around the Avengers compound at this point. There’s no real reason for Tony to get out of bed for anything less than another full-scale alien invasion. But it’s still the truth: he’s only got a handful of years before he's going to need to seriously consider retiring gracefully before another bad hit takes the decision out of his hands forever.

It’s kind of funny, thinking about it like that. There were a good few years of his life where he had accepted dying in the suit not just as an inevitability, but a necessity. Anything less would have been a failure of responsibility. Funny how things change.

"Hey, you okay?" Peter asks, laying his head against Tony's chest, right on top of the nanite housing unit. Tony realizes he’s lapsed into wistful silence. That’s a thing he does now, apparently.

Tony decides there’s no reason to spoil the mood by bringing up The Age Thing tonight. He knows from experience Peter definitely does not ever see the humor in it.

"Just wondering if my anniversary present is up to snuff," he says instead. He thumbs at the worried furrow between Peter’s eyebrows. “You’ve already beaten me for the year, but my honor demands I try not to embarrass myself.” Peter’s birthday present to Tony had been a full suite of upgrades to the Mark LXXIX that he had, apparently, managed to painstakingly hide from Tony for _four months_ by only sneaking downstairs to the lab to work on it while Tony was asleep.

(Peter had actually been _nervous_ to give it to him, for some reason, as if he hadn’t just done something for Tony literally no one else on Earth or off it was capable of doing. Ridiculous.)

Peter does not say ‘gift giving isn’t a competition’, because he knows how to pick his battles. He does, however, say "You remember I told you no private islands, right?"

“Cross my heart and hope to die, absolutely no private islands this time,” Tony says. He twirls his champagne glass. “ _But._ I do know a guy if you ever change your mind-”

Peter rolls his eyes and shuts him up with a kiss, and then by taking out his phone and snapping a few pictures of them curled on the chair. He knows all of Tony’s weaknesses, damn him, and one of them is ruining every picture Peter takes with terrible faces and bunny ears.

"Did you see that girl Kate inside?” Peter comments, as he starts to post the worst of the batch with a painfully earnest Happy Birthday message. He always overdoes the heart emojis. “I’m pretty sure she’s an actual baby.”

" _I’m_ pretty sure she’s at least in college, Mister ‘swinging around Queens in my pajamas at age fourteen’."

“Uh, that was obviously completely different, duh,” Peter says, with a self-aware smile. He puts his phone away and twists to lay on his stomach, propping his head up on one hand to look at Tony. "You’re right, though. It’s so funny, now that I'm an actual adult I feel like I need to apologize to May for… everything.”

“I don’t know, seems like you turned out okay,” Tony says. “Not that I’m biased.”

“Yeah, but she still had a heart attack every time I threw myself off a building.” Peter tilts his head and his eyes unfocus for a second, nostalgic little smile on his face, like he’s remembering that painfully brave high schooler who had too much heart to let a single stolen bicycle go un-rescued in all of Queens. “God, teenagers have no idea what they’re doing.”

“Something I do remember trying to convince you of more than once,” Tony says. He knows Peter knows he’s referring to several increasingly desperate speeches he had tried to give Peter, all along the same general lines of _look, you’re eighteen, I know you think what you’re feeling is true-love-forever, but-_

“Well, lucky for you, you failed miserably,” Peter teases. He leans in closer to press his forehead against Tony’s. “Imagine how boring being mature about it would have been.”

"Lucky for me I had zero self control even when I really should have?" Tony asks, tracing the line of one of Peter’s eyebrows.

"Uh, yeah, and lucky for _me_ I didn't miss out on years of mind blowing sex because you'd rather guiltily masturbate inste- ow, okay, sorry!" Peter cuts off, snickering, as Tony pulls his hair.

"I refuse to confirm or deny anything about the validity of that statement," Tony says. He smooths the rumpled hair back into place.

"You don't need to, Friday likes me better than you. She can confirm anything I want."

"All of my children have betrayed me," Tony laments. DUM-E and U like Peter way better, too. "Just because you're the fun stepdad who doesn't discipline them. It’s insulting."

"It's true, I let DUM-E stay up past his bedtime last night." Peter smiles, but then says, very slightly hesitant, "did I make you start freaking out about this again?"

"Me? Freaking out over something? Obviously. But probably not as much as I should be, so," Tony says wryly.

Peter sighs, and frowns in thought.

“It’s like… yeah, I was just a stupid kid,” he says after a moment. “I had no idea what I was doing, and that could’ve really fucked me up if someone had taken advantage, you know? So lucky me that the man I fell in love with was the best man I’ve ever known, and I never had anything to worry about with him.” His voice is almost conspiratorial as he says it. He leans down to give Tony another kiss, this time on the other cheek. “ _And_ lucky me he built me a suit I could safely throw myself off buildings in. Right?”

“You don’t need to convince me, sweetheart,” Tony says, even though his heart feels just a bit like it’s been scraped raw with the boundless trust Peter has always put in him, regardless of whether he’s ever actually deserved it. “I could still poke a few holes in it, but I think after ten years you might have finally won this argument.”

“After ten years I have definitely won this argument,” Peter says. He cocks his head. “But maybe we should stick it out for another ten just to be sure I’m right?”

“What hardships you put yourself through just to get the last word,” Tony says. “I’ll put a note in my calendar. Ten more years to prove Peter right.” He thinks about ten years of sitting across the breakfast table from Peter every morning, ten years of getting startled awake in the middle of the night by Peter’s freezing cold feet. Ten years of his heart in his throat every time Peter rushes into danger, and ten years of watching the rest of the world figure out what Tony’s already known for a long, long time – that Peter’s the bravest, sweetest, most brilliant person he’s ever met. He thinks about getting to do it all for another ten, and thinks it sounds like a pretty good deal.

They spend a few minutes laying there in contented silence, in the pleasantly mild nighttime of late spring. Tony teases an unruly curl with his fingers. Peter idly plays with the collar of Tony’s shirt. The gleeful noise from inside gets louder, though Tony still can't make out exactly what's happening. Peter tilts his head towards the noise.

"Thor's getting the new kids to do shots of Asgardian liquor," he informs Tony.

"And once was enough for you, I take it," Tony says. Even Peter could, apparently, get completely fucked up when the alcohol was from Asgard.

"I'm pretty sure that stuff made me hallucinate," Peter says happily.

Tony laughs. “Take it from someone who was there, Pete, there’s no ‘pretty sure’ about it.”

They fade into silence again. Tony thinks it is, objectively, very romantic. The deserted deck, the stars, the fire pit (it’s not nearly cold enough out to actually use, but it’s the thought that counts). The cuddling.

Another few minutes pass.

He taps his fingers against the armrest a few times.

"You wanna blow this joint and go get pizza?” Tony asks abruptly. “That place from last week?" 

"Oh God, I thought you'd never ask," Peter says, jumping up out of the chair. "Wanna take a shortcut and skip the crowd inside?" He taps his wrist to indicate the bracelets holding the nanites of his newest suit.

"Obviously," Tony says. He's not retired yet. He reaches over and drains his champagne glass in one swallow, then lets Peter pull him up effortlessly, taking all of his weight. Perks of a super powered husband.

"Can you at least give me a hint about the anniversary present?" Peter shucks off his suit jacket as he walks - one of these days Tony will crack the nanite-fabric-compression problem - before carefully folding it and gently placing it on a chair, because somehow he still thinks it matters when something's expensive. "It's not a car again, is it? Because you know I still can't actually drive." 

Tony crumples his jacket into a ball and throws it on top of Peter's, just for the annoyed look he gets. 

"Which doesn’t matter when you have _an AI driving for you_. You’re such a New Yorker someti- look, you're going to love it, it’s so much better than a car."

“When you say ‘so much better’, I just hear more expensive,” Peter says dubiously. “I really don’t want too much.”

“I have paid zero dollars, Euros, yen, bitcoin, or any other Earth currency for this present,” Tony says. It is, literally speaking, accurate, as they don’t accept Earth currency in most corners of the galaxy.

“Hmm,” Peter says. “I’m going to hold you to that.” Then he grins, bright and gleeful, and darts in to give Tony a kiss. “Race you,” he whispers against Tony’s lips.

Peter hops backwards a few steps and does a leaping backflip off of the side of the building, not even bothering to activate his suit until he’s in freefall. He hurtles toward the ground and waits until the last possible moment to catch himself with a web, flinging himself around the corner and out of sight, his giddy laughter still echoing in Tony’s ears.

Tony smiles and indulges himself in watching his adrenaline junkie husband for a moment. He taps the nanite casing on his chest, lets the Mark LXXIX wash over him. He can take his time. It’s cute Peter thinks he can out-swing the suit’s brand-new upgraded thrusters. 

“Hoisted by your own petard, kid,” Tony says to himself. Then he’s struck by a thought. “Friday?”

“Yes, Boss?” Friday answers through his glasses.

“Do you think Peter would consider a spaceship to be ‘too much’?”

Friday pauses.

“I know you don’t need that much processing power to answer that, Fri. You’re just being dramatic.”

“Insufficient data to draw a conclusion, Boss.” He can’t tell if he’s imagining the amused edge to her voice.

“Ah, well,” Tony says. He climbs up onto the ledge, stares down at the twinkling lights of the city spread below him. “Perfect chance to gather some data, then. Though for my sake he better like it. I really don’t want to know what the return policies are on these things.”

As he looks down he’s struck, suddenly, by the long buried memory of another birthday – his twenty second. His parents barely in the ground. Tony so fucked up on a cocktail of drugs he couldn’t even list that he could barely stay upright. He has the distinct, vivid sense memory of leaning over the edge of a skyscraper in – fuck, where had he been that year? It had barely mattered. He remembers leaning over the edge of that building and thinking how funny it was that it wouldn’t matter at all if he jumped over the side and died.

It had been so fucking funny to his strung out mind that he had started laughing, mindless, hysterical, falling backwards onto the ground – and then, somehow, all at once he had been crying, instead. That’s how the paramedics had found him, hours later, after someone had seen him crumpled there on the floor and had thought he had died of an overdose.

The tabloids had had a field day with that one.

But he hadn’t died that night. He had survived that birthday and every other, to not only make it to sixty but make it to sixty married and happy and more or less sober. To make it to sixty in a world that, amazingly, still exists. Still exists _with Peter in it_ , Peter who somehow, inexplicably, wants to spend another ten years with him. He can’t even imagine what that twenty two year old would think of him now. It still seems so unreal, sometimes, that he feels like he can only look at it out of the corners of his eyes or the mirage will disappear from sight completely.

He takes off his glasses as the suit’s helmet clicks into place, the HUD lighting up around him. The tracker in Peter’s suit says he’s nearly halfway to the pizza place already.

“You know you’re just tiring yourself out for no reason, kid,” Tony says. The laugh that comes through the suit’s speakers doesn’t sound remotely out of breath.

“After we get back I’ll kick everyone out of the penthouse and show you just how not tired I am, _Mr. Stark_ ,” Peter says, because he’s a little shit and Tony is a very predictable man. “Also, if you think about it, those are technically my thrusters, so even if I lose I still win.”

“Jesus, you’re going to be the death of me,” he says. But what a way to go.

Tony looks down at the neon spread of the city beneath him, and jumps. 

**Author's Note:**

> It's definitely 'too much', but Peter still likes the spaceship.


End file.
